


Hearing the Music

by Heronymus



Category: Firefly
Language: English
Status: Completed
Published: 2006-06-20
Updated: 2006-06-20
Packaged: 2019-04-29 07:18:44
Rating: General Audiences
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 1
Words: 1,613
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/14467716
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/Heronymus/pseuds/Heronymus
Summary: Kaylee goes searching for the music.





	Hearing the Music

**Author's Note:**

> Note from alice ttlg, the archivist: this story was originally archived at [Firefly’s Glow](https://fanlore.org/wiki/Firefly%27s_Glow), and was moved to the AO3 as part of the Open Doors project in 2018. I tried to reach out to all creators about the move and posted announcements, but may not have reached everyone. If you are the creator and would like to claim this work, please contact me using the e-mail address on [Firefly's Glow collection profile](https://archiveofourown.org/collections/fireflysglow/profile).
> 
>  **Author's notes:** Just a little moment of insight. Possible spoiler (if you squint really hard) for "The Message".  
>  Thanks to the estate of John R. Cash for the lyrics I've butchered to make them fit.

  
Author's notes: Just a little moment of insight. Possible spoiler (if you squint really hard) for "The Message".  
Thanks to the estate of John R. Cash for the lyrics I've butchered to make them fit.  


* * *

Hearing the Music

## Hearing the Music

Kaylee could hear the music, and she was sure it wasn't in her head, so she went looking for it. She'd first heard the soft strumming filtering up through the secondary cooling vent while she was ducked under the main drive, swapping out the intercooler valvecap. Time on-planet was nice, and not just for the walkaround, but for the chance to put Serenity to sleep and get some much-needed patching done. Everyone was supposed to be asleep; it was just past midnight, with only her and Jayne awake; Jayne to stand watch, and her to...well, to do some work. Inara was out on business, and the Captain was bunked down, as was Simon and River. Wash and Zoey had turned in early after a hot bath; since there was a sizable lake nearby, water rations were relaxed. So there shouldn't be anyone up and about, let alone playing a guitar. 

She wouldn't even have noticed it, but to swap out the valvecap the engine had to be totally shut down: zero power, just the battery cells to run the comp. She'd shut off the life support to allow a cross-wire without a short, and so the fans weren't spinning, and sounds just drifted through the vents. Like whispers on the wind. 

Kaylee was always a little bit nervous, in times like this. It felt as if Serenity were holding her breath, waiting to start breathing again. She wondered if sometimes Simon had felt like she did right now, like there was a tension in the air, thick like orange blossom scent. She scooted back out from under the engine, wiped her hands, and flipped the starter. The capacitors whined, and then a deep thrum as Serenity took her first breath, and her heart beat again. Steady and slow, even now with the valvecap replaced. The beat had been ragged, a half-step off, since the last landing on Pleasaunce, but now her girl was right as rain. So the next step was to find out where the music was coming from. 

Kaylee stepped out of the engine room and cocked her head, listening hard. River might be almost a part of Serenity, but Kaylee learned months and months ago how to hear what the Old Girl was saying to her. The music was softer now, muted by the airflow and the whirring of the fans, but still there. The music didn't get louder here, so it wasn't coming from the kitchen or the galley. She moved down the hall, towards the bridge, passing silently through the dining room and stepping through the door into the crew cabin area. The music was slightly louder here, but it wasn't coming from any of the rooms. A couple of steps forward, and she could tell it wasn't coming from the bridge, either; the near-silence of the sleeping ship reigned in this hall. Quickly, she turned and made her way down the stairwell, creeping carefully into the cargo area. 

The lights in this area had been switched off, with only a small red emergency light in the corner of the bay supplying any illumination inside. Kaylee could take these steps at a dead run in pitch black, but she was slow and careful this time. She had a feeling that the music was something special. The cargo ramp had been deployed; cool night air washed into the bay, and the familiar oil and welding smells of home now warred with the green grass and pine scents of home then. For a moment, Kaylee just stopped and breathed it in. 

She almost started when the guitar chord wafted out of the darkness. It was a sweet, soft song, the strumming careful, notes drifting rather than plucked from the strings. Her surprise at the music was nothing, it turned out, to her surprise at the voice that sang along. 

Jayne's growl of a voice turned out to be a quite sweet baritone, barely above a whisper in the dark. It had a raw, untrained quality that brought yet more memories of home, and for the first time in months Kaylee felt the sharp pang of homesickness deep in her chest, next to her heart. She crept lower on the stairs, her shipsocks keeping her feet safe from the cold metal gratings. reaching the mezzanine crossover, she stopped again, and finally her eyes found the figure in the gloom, carefully fingering the frets on an acoustic guitar. 

Jayne was a cooler coil, she thought. He had inner turns and twists, and a secret, cold core he didn't share with nobody. Sometime shortly before he came on-board, it was clear that either the Captain or more likely Zoey had said something to him, probably something menacing, because the moment he clapped eyes on her, he had treated her like a little sister. And since Kaylee had grown up with older brothers, it was easy just to treat him like one. But that quiet face and menacing demeanor hid unexpected depths. Jayne's money always disappeared fast, and while he drank and whored pretty spectacularly, it wasn't enough to account for all of his share. 

There were layers to him, Kaylee thought. But he's Jayne all the way down. 

The music drifted to an end, and she heard him sigh in the dark. 

"You can come out, little Kaylee. I ain't gonna bite." 

Kaylee wasn't surprised that Jayne had heard her; his tracking skills were one of the reasons the captian kept him around, despite his tendency to cause trouble. 

"You play real nice, Jayne." 

A grunt was her only answer. In the dark, it was tough to tell, but she didn't think he'd turned his head from the door. Still on lookout, after all. His watchdog demeanor wasn't just a mask. 

"Why don't you play more? I bet you'd sound right nice in the galley; the acoustics in th--" 

"Ain't gonna happen." He didn't raise his voice at all, but the finality cut through Kaylee's sentence like a cleaver. "I don't play for nobody. Just diddling with the guitar." He began to put it aside, but Kaylee move quickly, laying her hand on top of his, stilling the movement of the instrument. 

"Jayne," she said, and stopped. She actually didn't know what to say, since she didn't really know what she wanted him to do. Other than to not stop playing. "Play something for me." She sat, right there, cross-legged in the dark with the breeze at her back. "Just for me." 

Jayne's face was in bas-relief in the dark red light. Half his face in shadow, the other half bathed only in the ruby glow, she noticed not for the first time that he was quite handsome, looked at a certain way. He wasn't the kind of man she liked, she wasn't the man she wanted now, but she could see that if he wasn't so rough, he'd have sex without having to pay the woman. There were hidden depths in him. Like a cooling coil, he was hot and fast on the surface, and went cold and dark at the center. But there were depths there. 

Jayne slowly lifted the guitar again, setting it once again in his lap and fingering the strings carefully. 

"Who taught you to play?" She wondered if this was what it was like, trying to coax a hurt dog to take food from an outstretched hand. 

"My mama. Mama taught me everything there was to know. Shootin', huntin', skinnin'. Taught me my prayers and a bitty bug, taught me to take care of my brothers and sister. Still send 'em money every time I can." 

Kaylee knew not to say anything; to say something now would spoil the mood, and to say something later would shame Jayne, and Jayne ashamed was a dangerous loose bolt. 

"''swhat a man does, sends money home." Jayne's was strangely rough in the dark. 

His fingers started pulling out a tune, then, and she recognized it right away. An old, old song, from Earth-that-Was. 

"... _When I was just a baby_ ,  
_My momma told me 'son_ ,  
_always be a good boy_ ,   
_don't ever play with guns_.'  
_But I shot a man on Athens_ ,  
_Just to watch him die_.  
_When I hear those engines rumble_ ,  
_I hang my head and cry_." 

Kaylee sat on the steps 'til the sun crept over the horizon, and listened to him play, softly, one song after another, in the dark and the quiet. 

"You go all the way down, Jayne." She nodded solemnly at his scowl. "Down to the dark depths of you, you go all the way down. Good night, Jayne. Thank you for the songs." 

Zoey was headed for the bay to relieve Jayne as Kaylee was passing through the galley, headed back for the engine room, but Kaylee didn't feel like talking, and Zoey never did. She slid under the slowly-turning heart of Serenity, reaching for her calipers to check on the fitting for the new 'vaporator, she stopped for a moment, straining her ears, listening. 

But she couldn't hear the music any more.

* * *

 

 

 

 

 

 

Title:   **Hearing the Music**   
Author:   **Heronymus**   
Details:   **Standalone**  |  **PG**  |  **gen**  |  **8k**  |  **06/20/06**   
Characters:  Kaylee, Jayne   
Summary:  Kaylee goes searching for the music.   
Notes:  Just a little moment of insight. Possible spoiler (if you squint really hard) for "The Message".   
Thanks to the estate of John R. Cash for the lyrics I've butchered to make them fit.   
  



End file.
